PUBLIC MARKS with tags image & xen

# Performing remote backups of VMs created with xen-create-image tool (xen-tools). # Use rdiff-backup as backend.

Virtualization offers advantages that include server consolidation, isolation, rapid provisioning, and improved change management processes. Since virtualization breaks the hardware dependency and isolates virtual machines from details about the physical servers on which they are hosted, virtual images can be moved from one hosting platform to another. They can also be cloned to create more virtual machines, as desired. One of the challenges with cloning virtual images is handling operating system, network, and application specific customization. This article provides a sample framework for automating virtual image activation on new host platforms. This article, along with a previous article on Using virtual image templates to deploy WebSphere Application Server, demonstrates an automated approach for quickly and easily provisioning new WebSphere Application Server environments. The sample deployment and activation code included with this article is independent of WebSphere Application Server and can be used in conjunction with other software inside a virtual image. The specific example provided here is for WebSphere Application Server V6 in VMware or XEN virtual images, using SUSE V10 as the guest operating system. The activation techniques described in this article can be used in conjunction with IBM Tivoli® Provisioning Manager as described in Using Tivoli Provisioning Manager to deploy composite virtual appliances.

The idea behind the whole set-up is to get a High availability two node Cluster with redundant data. The two identical Servers are installed with Xen hypervisor and almost same configuration as Cluster nodes. The configuration and image files of Xen virtual machines are stored on drbd device for redundancy. Drbd8 and OCFS2 allows simultaneous mounting on both nodes, which is required for live migration of xen virtual machines. This Article describes Heartbeat2 Xen cluster Using Ubuntu (7.10) OS, drbd8 and OCFS2 (Ver. 1.39) File system. Although here Ubuntu is used it can be done in almost same way with Debian

This Article describes Heartbeat2 Xen cluster Using Ubuntu (7.10) OS, drbd8 and OCFS2 (Ver. 1.39) File system. Although here Ubuntu is used it can be done in almost same way with Debian Idea The idea behind the whole set-up is to get a High availability two node Cluster with redundant data. The two identical Servers are installed with Xen hypervisor and almost same configuration as Cluster nodes. The configuration and image files of Xen virtual machines are stored on drbd device for redundancy. Drbd8 and OCFS2 allows simultaneous mounting on both nodes, which is required for live migration of xen virtual machines.

While consolidating physical to virtual machines using Xen,we want to be able to deploy and manage virtual machines in the same way we manage and deploy physical machines. For operators and support people there should be no difference between virtual and physical installations. Integrating Virtual Machines with the rest of the infrastructure, should have a low impact on the existing infrastructure. Typically, Virtual machine vendors have their own tools to deploy and manage virtual machines. Apart from the vendor lock-in to that specific virtual machine platform , it requires the administrators to learn yet another platform that they need to understand and manage, something we want to prevent. This paper discusses how we integrated SystemImager with Xen, hence creating a totally open source deployment framework for the popular open source Virtual Machine monitor. We will document both development of our tools and go more in depth on other infrastructure related issues when using Xen System Imaging environments in combination with Virtual machines can also be used to ensure safe production deployments. By saving your current production image before updating to your new production image, you have a highly reliable contingency mechanism. If the new production environment is found to be flawed, simply roll-back to the last production image on the virtual machines with a simple update command! Xen has become one of the most popular virtualisation platforms over the last year, although not such a young project, it is now rapidly gaining acceptance in the corporate world as a valuable alternative to VMWare.

Converting a VMWare image to Xen HVM

The process for converting a VMWare VMDK disk image to Xen HVM is rather quite easy. However, there are "gotchas" that you need to consider when doing this conversion.

This tutorial explains how to convert a VMWARE image of a Debian Etch to a XEN image on a Debian Sid dom0 using XEN 3.0.3.